Over the last decade, mobile devices have become the primary communications device for users. Given the proliferation of mobile devices along with increased presence of bandwidth intensive applications running on these mobile devices, it has become a significant challenge to meet Quality of Service (QoS) demands on a given network. Such challenges are exacerbated at certain locations, such as populous venues where thousands or tens of thousands of mobile devices are attempting to access the same network. As a result, users of these mobile devices tend to experience frustration caused by significant connection difficulties when attempting to access the network and significant latency issues after access is granted.
It is contemplated that, over the last few years, Wireless Fidelity (WiFi™) hotspots, which operate in accordance with the IEEE 802.11 standard-2012, have gained popularity as a cellular offload to help alleviate any resource limitations present in a particular cellular network. However, the effectiveness of WiFi™ hotspots has not been fully realized because the individual mobile devices are solely responsible for deciding when to switch from cellular to WiFi™ (or vice-versa) and normally deploy communications switching policies that are heavily weighted in staying on the WiFi™ network regardless of the connectivity levels.
Furthermore, as individual mobile devices are currently responsible for deciding when to switch from one network (e.g., cellular) to another network (e.g. WiFi™), it has become quite difficult for network service providers to manage capacity demands. The reason is that the mobile devices are capable of connecting and using different networks, so capacity demands can vary significantly.
What is needed is a framework that enables one or more network devices to dynamically coordinate device connectivity, even on a per session basis, to different heterogeneous networks.